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COMMENTARY
February 26, 2005
The new wave
I made a rather provocative statement on Wednesday on returning from vacation. (What? Me? Provocative?) I said That election in Iraq ... shows, unmistakeably, that Bush was right and the world was wrong. Not a few readers have suggested that the remark might require some amplification. Very well reach for your ear trumpets. For many decades now -- and essentially since the European powers discarded their imperial aspirations in the region -- the Middle East has been not precisely in a coma but in a deep though fitful sleep. Not unlike Europe in another way -- though in Europe's case the sleep is spiritual. Islam forges different minds and in the Middle East the lethargy has been expressed chiefly in political terms. Twenty or so Arab states have been thumbed under one or another form of secular authoritarianism usually dynastic. The bad breath of nationalism came and went roughly with the life of Gamal Abdul Nasser. Socialist aspirations ditto. The world's spectacular oil-burning post-War economic boom poured unearned wealth on several of the countries which so far as I can see does more moral damage to a people than poverty could ever do. But at the end of the day -- and the last century -- in the Arab countries and many other Islamic states public life continued under the clamp of arbitrary and ruthless despots. Saddam Hussein was only the most extreme example. Beyond the windfall of oil and foreign aid no Arab country displayed anything resembling economic vibrancy. Culturally as well as politically the atmosphere in almost every capital city was stultifying. And lately even the high birth rates in the hinterlands have collapsed. The only truly exciting thing through the entire Arab-Muslim world was revolutionary Islamism. Of course this was illegal and underground; though it occasionally surfaced in some localized mayhem. One of the greatest attractions of Osama bin Laden et al. perverse as this will sound was that he supplied the only available entertainment. To nothing else could the idealistic young be attracted. Anyone seeking an interesting life emigrated to Europe or America. Boredom is seriously underestimated as a motive cause in history. And among the more intelligent young it is always potentially lethal. The madrassas and "universities" of the Islamic world -- places like the venerable Al Azhar in Cairo -- do in fact produce sharp minds. But educated in a strict monotheism that is if anything over-focused. The symbiotic relationship between the terrorist gangs and the Muslim world's madrassas is almost too easy to explain. The first Islamist revolution was in Iran under Ayatolah Khomenei in 1979. Because Iran has always been somewhat aloof from Arab concerns and because it is Shia there was no chain reaction. There would have been if Iran were Egypt. The revolution could only prevail there anyway because the old Shah was not nearly so despotic as the men who controlled the countries surrounding. It was his failure to mow down his identifiable domestic opponents that finally cost him his throne. Sheer oppression has prevented the Islamist fanatics from rising to power in at least a dozen other nations. But with the passage of time every despotic regime must crack. The future of the region could until recently only have been worse than its past. Taliban Afghanistan was a harbinger. All the Arab countries have had as their interface with modernity some small and wealthy middle class usually foreign-educated and saturated with Western ideas. But these groups have been insulated by the political powers in each regime: they have been unable to make common cause with any group outside their own tiny minorities. The liberation of Afghanistan from the Taliban was still too little and too far away for any Arab to really care. But Iraq is located near the heart of the Arabic-speaking mind and what happens there cannot be concealed from anybody. Just now dramatically in Lebanon and Syria but also in Egypt and elsewhere the Arab world is monitoring Iraq. Eight million people defied terrorist intimidation to reach the polls and the government they elected is now taking power. For the first time since the Europeans checked out of the region an alternative to Islamism is established. For the first time a future has become visible to large masses of oppressed people other than being nailed into the Islamist coffin. President Bush pulled that off by force of will in the face of the world's contrary opinions. I cannot offer him a crisp enough salute. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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